Peace and Security Plus Zero Tolerance for Corruption

It was the perfect venue for the delivery of a speech that aimed at ensuring the cultivation of peace and security in the country. The reference here is the 25^th Anniversary of the Coronation of the Paramount Chief of Aflao, Togbui Adzonugaga Amenya Fiti, V. And the speech of the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, was delivered on the latter’s behalf by Mr. Ambrose Dery, the Minister of the Interior, whose portfolio originally covered the relatively recently created portfolio of the Minister of National Security. The President’s speech was on the peace and security of the country because Aflao Township is the main southeastern, actually eastern, gateway into the country. It is a border town that is located almost equally between the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana and, some critics would say, the Semi-Feudal and Dynastic Kangaroo Republic of officially French-speaking Togoland or Togo.

Aflao also has the unenviable history of being routinely used both as an entry point and an exit point by kleptocratic and nation-wrecking coup-plotters and bloody “revolutionaries” like the Rawlingses and the Tsikatas. The Harlleys and the Kotokas were also born and brought up in this part of our country. It is Anlo-Ewe Territory and it is either blessed or cursed with the double-edged historical twist of having had the longest and the most extensive history of geocultural proximity and even integration with the much larger neighboring Akan community. But among all the ethnic-Ewe polities, Anloland has also had the most volatile and downright violent relationship with Ghana’s Akan majority community and Multi-Nation. Significantly, though, that is not the thematic thrust or focus of this column, which is simply that President Akufo-Addo only touched on two of the three indispensable pedestals upon which to effectively and successfully propel Ghana’s economic development, namely, peace and security (See “Let’s Work to Maintain Ghana’s Peace, Security – Akufo-Addo” Modernghana.com 11/27/22).

What the legendary and proverbial “Little Man from Kyebi” glaringly left out of his “prevailing peace and security” speech was/is “Good Governance which, in essence, implies the drastic reduction in the degree and level of official corruption in the country or the widely perceived prevalence of the same. You see, presently, it cannot be gainsaid that there is a remarkable modicum of security in the country that did not previously exist or at least was palpably and credibly perceived to exist. But it is also undeniably a moot question regarding the fact of whether, indeed, there is a salutary prevalence of peace in the country. The President is almost certain to be the first person to note that on the peacemaking front, much more needs to be done and/or achieved, beginning with the French-speaking former Foreign Minister and Minister for West African or ECOWAS Regional Integration himself. In short, Nana Akufo-Addo needs to listen more and act on the criticisms and the feedback that he regularly receives from the intellectual community of the country, more popularly known as the Intelligentsia and, indeed, the wider and greater Ghanaian public at large.

He also needs to sharpen his ministerial management skills by staying as far away from what may be aptly characterized as the “Akyea-Mensah Murder Syndrome,” which may very well have effectively ended the otherwise yeomanly and sterling statesmanship career of the legendary and putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Modern Ghanaian Politics, to wit, Dr. Joseph (Nana Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye Danquah. The “Akyea-Mensah Murder Syndrome” in the present context entails the sort of blind and foolhardy support that Nana Akufo-Addo is increasingly becoming notorious and guilty of nurturing or inadvisably incubating vis-à-vis the deafening public outcry for the immediate removal of his cousin the Finance Minister, namely, Mr. Kenneth Ofori-Atta, who clearly does not seem to have performed the sort of magical wonders that the University of Ghana and Lancing College, UK, graduate would the rest of the nation believe that the Columbia- and Yale-educated Investment Banker has.

But that is even not the most critical question here. Rather, what is ineluctably at issue here is that without the sort of good governance that the former Agyekum-Kufuor-appointed Attorney-General and Minister of Justice curiously appears to be so painfully and tragically ignoring, absolutely no amount or quality of the “prevailing peace and security” governance ingredients that he so pontifically relayed to the Paramount Chief of Aflao and the people of Anloland, through his Interior Minister, would spur up the influx of foreign investors into the country. Equally significant ought to be underscored the fact that foreign investors are hardnosed profiteers, first and foremost, and not magnanimous dispensers of charity or Father Christmas gift-givers. Millionaire and well-heeled Ghanaians like the President himself are the most ideal investors of the very country in which they were born and raised. This is what each and every one of our leaders ought to be vigorously promoting.

You see, if Ghanaians are woefully incapable or nihilistically unwilling to heavily invest our talents and capital resources in the development of our own country and our macroeconomy for the primary benefit of ourselves and our relatives, kinsfolk and neighbors, it would be downright and patently absurd to expect complete strangers and foreigners to come and senselessly throw their hard-earned money and capital resources into our Galamsey-damaged and ecologically devastated country and environment.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
November 27, 2022
E-mail: [email protected]